Enhance your font smoothing in Win XP, obtain a more OSX like font appearance

I figured out a really easy tweak that enables you to customize your cleartype settings, or what is also called “anti aliasing”. This will enable you to obtain a more OSX like font appearance. I applied this tweak last night and it looks great, give it a try.

1. First, you must ensure cleartype is turned on, you must open your system properties:

Right click on the My Computer icon and select Properties from the menu
OR
Hold down the ALT key while double clicking the My Computer icon.
OR
Hold down the Windows key and press the PAUSE button

2. If you did the first step right, your system properties window should have opened. In the properties window, click on the ADVANCED tab.

3. Under the PERFORMANCE section, click ADVANCED

4. In the next window, look for the entry “SMOOTH EDGES OF SCREEN FONTS”, ensure this item is checked and click the APPLY button

5. You have just enabled cleartype, now to tweak it out

6. Open the program REGEDIT.EXE

7. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USERControl Paneldesktop

8. In the right pane, look for an entry called FontSmoothingGamma

9. The range of this setting in decimal value is 1 to 2000, double click this entry and change the decimal value to any setting you like, 1 being the heaviest and 2000 being the lightest (I use 750 on my computer, it looks really good, just a suggestion)

10. To see the changes, you will have to logoff or reboot

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 2:13 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.